BLM holding facilities being inundated with wild horses 

 Fiscal year 2011, wild horse and burro holding costs were $35.7 million dollars  

 47%  of the 75.8 million dollars wild horse and burro program budget

As long as wild horses continue to be placed in long term holding, 

these taxpayer funded costs will increase.

By Scott Sonner / The Associated Press 

RENO, Nev. — The government spent less than 1 percent of its wild horse management budget on contraception programs and more than 60 percent on horse holding facilities last fiscal year, despite a pledge to step up use of fertility control as an alternative to controversial roundups of overpopulated mustang herds on U.S. rangelands, agency records show.

 Wild horse advocates say the fiscal year 2013 budget numbers show the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has reneged on a commitment to control fertility as the best way moving forward to keep herd numbers in check when necessary in Nevada and nine other Western states.

 Instead, the leader of the largest national coalition says she fears the administration is moving to align itself with a growing number of ranching interests, urging an end to the ban on slaughter of horses at overflowing holding pens where costs are skyrocketing.

 “The only explanation at this point is that the BLM is creating a crisis where slaughter of America’s wild horses is the only solution,” said Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign. She said the 509 mares that received fertility treatment last year were far short of the annual goal of 2,000 the agency set three years ago.

BLM spokesman Tom Gorey said Wednesday the critics’ claims are baseless, “anti-BLM propaganda.”

 “It has been and remains the policy of the BLM not to sell or send wild horses or burros to slaughter,” he said in an email.

Until recently, mustang advocates felt comfortable that the slaughter ban would remain intact, given public opinion polls showing widespread support nationally for what they say is an icon of the American West. But that’s no longer the case in places such as northern Nevada, where ranchers and rural politicians are pushing for change, citing drought conditions and lack of holding space.

The Nevada Farm Bureau Federation and Nevada Association of Counties filed a federal lawsuit Dec. 30 seeking to force the BLM to use existing authority to sell older horses without the usual prohibition on resale for slaughter in cases when animals are deemed unadoptable. Earlier this month, a BLM resource advisory committee in Nevada also voiced support for some unconditional sales.

 “It’s time to think outside of the box,” said Debbie Lassiter, chairwoman of the Sierra Front Great Basin Northeast RAC.
 In 2012, the number of horses and burros at holding facilities (47,000) surpassed the estimated number on the range (40,000) for the first time since President Richard Nixon signed the Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.

 In a 451-page report highly critical of the BLM last June, an independent panel of the National Academy of Sciences said the agency should invest in widespread fertility control of the mustangs instead of spending millions to house them. It concluded the BLM’s removal of nearly 100,000 horses from the Western range over the past decade is probably having the opposite effect of its intention to ease ecological damage and reduce overpopulated herds.

Wild Horse Adoption Set for Saturday

 By: Terri Russell

CARSON CITY, NV - If you've ever dreamed of owning a mustang from the Nevada Range, you have a chance to bid on one Saturday at the Stewart Conservation Camp in Carson City. This is one of four adoptions that can on each year at the camp. The trainers are inmates who in the beginning have no experience with horses whatsoever.
Inmate Roland Moore has fun goofing around with his mustang Rebel.
Standing on Rebel's back with a flag, crawling underneath the horse—it can't be done around just any horse.
But consider, too, Rebel has only been in training about four months. And his trainer is Roland, who until 3 months age had never been around horses.
“I didn't know anything about horses. I just thought you saddled them up and rode off into the sunset, you know, like in the westerns. It's taught me to be a better person,” says inmate Kenneth Parker as he watches Moore.
Parker is the most experienced trainer in this group of inexperienced riders and trainers.
Handsome Jack is his 12th horse; each one of the animals he's trained, he says, has given him a sense of confidence and accomplishment.
Another horse is named Southern Comfort; trainer Sean Hammon has been in the program for 6 months and he too had never been around horses before this.
He canters the horse with no hands around the arena with no effort at all.
A total of 14 mustangs will be up for adoption this weekend. Inmates have been working on their opening routine for a month hoping to show their horses versatility and training.
Outside in the big arena the inmates show other skills their horses have learned. Swinging ropes and snapping whips--most of the animals are okay with it.